Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 May 1803-27 April 1882) was an American transcendentalist essayist and philosopher who was best known for his championing of individualism and freedom. His 1837 "The American Scholar" speech inspired a generation of philosophers to break away from the European schools and develop an independent American school of philosophy and writing.

Biography
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1803, and he graduated from Harvard in 1821 at the age of 18. In 1826, he sought a warmer climate to cope with his health problems, and he briefly settled in St. Augustine, Florida, where he met Prince Achille Murat, befriending him and being educated by him. Emerson became the junior pastor of the Second Church of Boston on 11 January 1829, although his wife's death led to him leaving the church. He toured Europe in 1833 and met John Stuart Mill in Rome, and, in 1836, he was one of the co-founders of the Transcendental Club. He published his first essay, titled "Nature", on 9 September 1836, and he went on to become a publisher lecturer and essayist who wrote a journal which would later be published in 16 large volumes. In 1837, he befriended Henry David Thoreau, convincing him to become a writer as well. On 15 July 1838, he made a controversial graduation speech at the Divinity School where he said that Jesus was not God, and he was not to speak again at Harvard for 30 years. However, by the 1850s he was giving as many as 80 lectures a year. His "The American Scholar" speech in 1837 was considered by Oliver Wendell Holmes to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence", as he argued for Americans to develop their own writing and philosophical style; from the mid-1830s to mid-1840s, he published two series of essays, developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the relationship between soul and the surrounding world, and the universe being composed of nature and the soul. From 1844 on, he became an active abolitionist, and he likened John Brown to Christ after his execution in 1859. Emerson befriended Charles Sumner and voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, although he was upset that he was more focused on preserving the Union than ending slavery. After 1867, his health declined, Emerson having lost his friends Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne a few years earlier. He died in Concord, Massachusetts in 1882 at the age of 78.